Bertha Brock Park is open to campers and other visitors, and operating at close to its usual levels of service following a record-breaking flood in the county this spring.

The park's manager, Loren Gage, said he is "95 percent complete" with clean-up. The area behind Palmer Lodge, where a stone bridge was washed out and moved off its foundation by Bellamy Creek flood waters, remains closed. Gage is still working on getting quotes to repair the bridge. A fundraiser, the Bertha Brock Bridge Bash, hosted by the Friends of Bertha Brock Park, is planned for Aug. 23 to offset anticipated costs of that repair.

"Everything is open except the back stone bridge. We've had a lot of people. It's a normal year, if not a little busier," said Gage. "We've really had a long couple of months after the flood, but we got things in shape pretty quick. It went well, considering the amount of water through here."

Between $7,000 and $9,000 has been spent to date to clean and repair the park after the waters subsided, Gage said. Topsoil was purchased for washed-out areas, and gravel was brought in for side roads and shoulders. Parking lots in the lower area of the park, which were washed out, had to be rebuilt.

"We hired a contractor to rebuild the parking lots themselves, because we didn't have the packing equipment. The majority of the cost was gravel and cement for wash-outs," he said. "And grass seed. You can't believe how much it costs when you're buying it in 50-pound bags and in bulk."

A previously scheduled project to chip-seal and fog-seal the park's main road was completed Monday. Flood waters actually did very little additional damage to that road.

"This is something we worked on in partnership with the road commission," said Gage. "The roads were to the point that we were going to lose them pretty soon if we didn't do something."

The estimated cost for the project is $18,500, which doesn't include side roads. The main road gets the most use, Gage said.

"This was the most inexpensive way to maintain the roads," he said. "We should be good for another 10 to 15 years."

If park guests hadn't seen the flood or read about it, they wouldn't know it had happened, "and that was basically our goal," said Gage. "Knock on wood we don't see another flood."